


Translations in Space

by apraxial



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: French, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apraxial/pseuds/apraxial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin finds out that Levi speaks French on a Sunday.</p>
<p>They’re making their way through the marketplaces, Petra laughing somewhere ahead of them, a high happy sound melting into Hanji’s fascinated questions about frog breeding. It’s not often that Petra laughs, and even less so when she laughs because of somebody other than Levi. Humanity’s strongest soldier is barely human, does not love, is untouched by emotion, and Erwin knows this is a lie.</p>
<p>Warnings apply to original characters (see end notes).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Translations in Space

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to be on the safe side with tags, but check the end notes if you think you'll be triggered!
> 
> From this 2013 [prompt](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/2848.html?thread=4320544): At least one of them speaks a language that the other doesn't and hearing it really turns their partner on ... I just really want to see one of them being uber turned on by the other one speaking in a language they can't understand.
> 
> Original also posted there. This version has cleaned up French.

Erwin finds out that Levi speaks French on a Sunday.

They’re making their way through the marketplaces, Petra laughing somewhere ahead of them, a high happy sound melting into Hanji’s fascinated questions about frog breeding. It’s not often that Petra laughs, and even less so when she laughs because of somebody other than Levi. Humanity’s strongest soldier is barely human, does not love, is untouched by emotion, and Erwin knows this is a lie.

A dark shape flits in front of them, quick and small, and Erwin startles, turning.

Levi already has his knee pressed into the boy’s (man’s? It’s so hard to tell with the undernourishment rampant within the walls) sternum. Erwin hadn’t even see him move.

The boy smiles toothily, dangerously, uncertainly, his voice high with pain as he says, “Levi.”

He says it _leh-vee._

Levi’s face changes.

Not enough for anyone to see, but Erwin has watched Levi: watched him spinning around wires, watched him strapping into 3DMG, watched him sleep collapsed over a desk with too much paperwork that he hated and always ended up making Erwin do anyway, watched the bruises darken under his eyes and his eyes grow distant. With Levi’s apathetic mask turned toward the world, the smallest shift is the most blatant shock on anyone else. Erwin has not seen it many times.

Erwin sees the surprise and for a moment, he also sees the pain that tells him Levi is human after all, his heart as exposed as anyone else’s.

“Michel,” Levi says, voice drawling and bored, the name stretched out contemplatively. He doesn’t seem to take notice of the people who are looking at them and wondering why Levi is holding a beggar boy to the ground.

_“Tu me manques,”_ Michel says. His voice is a bit lower, a bit calmer, a bit humorous. Levi has not eased up though; Michel has relaxed, body limp under Levi’s hold. Despite the smile on his face, his eyes anxiously seek guidance, some sort of answer on Levi’s face; he doesn’t get it. “Can you blame me?”

Levi just looks at Michel.

Michel’s smile fades. _“Il est mort. Tu n’y étais pas. Il est mort en te voulant.”_

Levi is very, very still.

Erwin becomes aware that Petra stands at his shoulder, Hanji hovering behind her. The latter is holding what looks like a bag of frog legs. Erwin doesn’t want to know why and can only hope that Hanji has the brains to put “water canteens” or “saddle straps” under her expenses. Last time she put “horse intestines,” Erwin had to go through too much paperwork to keep her from being transferred from Survey Corps.

“Levi?” Petra ventures, voice tentative. She says it _lee-vie_ , the way everyone else does, the way, Erwin realizes, that Levi has never said it.

Erwin shoots a look at Hanji, who takes Petra’s arm and pulls her away, chattering inanely. Petra resists at first, but no one can resist Hanji for long.

Michel’s face twists. He looks at where Petra has receded into the crowd. “ _Une belle fille. Elle lui ressemble._ Is she a good fuck?” His voice is acid.

Erwin fully expects Levi to break Michel’s neck right then and there. The Levi he’d first met – the cold-eyed, expressionless creature – would have in a heartbeat.

Levi doesn’t. He gets off Michel and offers a hand up. Michel laughs. They all know it isn’t a hand up, but Michel takes it anyway and finds himself immobilized under Levi’s grip, Levi’s mouth by his ear.  
No one is close enough to hear what he says except Erwin.

_“Ne me parlez pas. Ne me regardez pas. Pensez-vous que je ne vous tuerai pas? Êtes-vous si stupide que vous pensez que je suis la même personne que vous avez connue?”_

To his credit, Michel has the sense to look shaken. Levi shoves him away, hard; Michel catches himself. “I thought we were friends,” he said. _“Je pensais que vous l’aviez aimé!”_

Levi stands where he is, shoulders held back with military ease, but Erwin can read the tension in the stiffness of his elbows and the stillness of his neck. _“Je n’aime personne. Je les utilise seulement.”_

There is always a moment where a man’s universe fractures in front of his eyes and the fragments spin off into space, impossible to regain. This is where Michel is. Erwin almost wants to look away out of respect, or pity, but he doesn’t because men are most dangerous in their depths, and Levi is, after all, mortal.

Michel’s shoulder slumps.

Levi turns around and walks away.

* * *

They’re cleaning their gear at night by the base of the wall. They don’t patrol the walls, but as Levi says, the patrol scouts are so useless, Survey Corps might as well get one day out of seven patrolled with finesse. That’s one day out of seven that a possible Titan attack can be successfully repelled.

The other six days? Let the pigs bleed, and he had shrugged.

Erwin crosses over to Levi and crouches down next to him. Levi ignores him. Their breath hangs in the air. It’s a cold night. Mike and Hanji are horseplaying up on the wall, and Erwin watches their forms dance back and forth. It’s dangerous, it’s reckless, but considering what they do for a living, Erwin isn’t going to be the one to step in.

“What language was that?” Erwin asks, amiable, casual. He sounds uninterested, although he knows Levi sees right through him. “This morning.”

Levi’s answer is more reluctant to come than usual. “French.”

“I didn’t know you spoke French. Levi, isn’t it, then?” Erwin pronounces it the way Michel had. _Leh-vee._ It sounds weak. But Levi owns it well; he turns it into a mocking satire.

“Don’t call me that,” is all Levi says, curt.

_“Je n’aime personne,”_ Erwin says, the only phrase he had really picked up. He knows his pronunciation must be awful, but whatever it means, it makes Levi’s hand slow on his blade. “What else can you say?”

Levi stands up. His voice is pitched low and the words come out fast, tripping and slipping, and Erwin doesn’t know whether it’s the language or it’s Levi telling him something very important. _“Je souhaiterais que vous soyez mien.”_

“And that means?”

Levi finally looks at him. His mouth is a straight line across his face, but Erwin can almost see the smile. “It means, if you see Michel again, stay away from him.”

“I can handle myself,” Erwin remarks mildly. He doesn’t straighten up, knowing that the height difference will annoy Levi.

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Levi shoots over his shoulder as he walks away. A hiss of gas, the glint of wires, and then he’s joined Hanji and Mike up on the wall.

* * *

Somehow, Erwin isn’t surprised when Michel finds him three days later. The man has straightened up a bit. His shirt, undoubtedly his best one, would be used as a rag for Levi’s cleaning sprees. Erwin watches him approach and doesn’t care that Michel knows he’s watching him. He wonders how long Michel waited before Levi peeled away from Erwin to oversee the training.

“You’re Commander Smith,” Michel says, when he’s close enough. Like Levi, his English is accent-less, generic. Nothing about him suggests a fluency in French.

Erwin waits a moment to let the antagonism diffuse, become laughable. “That’s me,” he says.

“Do you know who Levi is?” Michel says.

Erwin smiles faintly. Levi would be furious, he thinks, but somehow, the thought fills him with a petty pleasure that he thought he’d gotten over years back. Apparently not. No one escapes their past, as Levi must be finding out right now. “Do you want to tell me?”

* * *

Erwin is right.

Levi is furious.

“I told you to stay away from him,” he says, his voice almost rising, almost angry. He is so rigid that Erwin thinks he might snap in half. His height doesn’t matter now. It’s never mattered. Levi has a presence that makes people pay attention.

They’re standing in Erwin’s office, papers scattered on the floor when Levi had slammed the door. Erwin wonders if Levi is going to hit him.

He thinks that he deserves it anyway.

Levi doesn’t hit him. “Why would you listen to him? Of all people –”

“Because he’s telling me things you’re not,” Erwin breaks in. He doesn’t lean back against the hard wood of his desk, but he comes close.

“ _Connard,”_ Levi says, and Erwin suspects it’s not a very nice thing to call someone in polite society.

“So you fell in love with a man, and you walked away from him,” Erwin says. “Why go to such lengths to hide that? Is it honor? Pride?”

“I did not fall –” Levi cuts himself off. He closes his eyes. Without that harsh gaze, Erwin can see that Levi looks thin and sick. He didn’t have much meat on him to begin with, but he looks like he’s burning through himself. The shadows under his eyes blend into his eyelashes, and it’s all two black smears against skin that is too pale and bruises too easily. Erwin thinks of bruises on Levi’s hips, other men’s fingers, and he is cold. He doesn’t know with what, only that this rushing emotion is too dangerous.

When Levi speaks again, his voice is dangerously calm, dangerously blank, and even Erwin can’t read anything in it. “Fine, yes. It’s honor. It’s pride, commander.”

And Levi moves to walk out, but Erwin moves forward at the same time and grabs Levi’s wrist hard enough to feel the bones shift under pressure. It must hurt, but Levi doesn’t say a word, and he only half turns.

The words are low and desperate. Erwin wishes he could see Levi’s face in this moment. “What do you want, Erwin?” 

“I want you to tell me why it matters,” Erwin says. He wants to hear it from Levi’s mouth.

Levi turns now. “Because it’s not honor, and it’s not pride. It’s trust. I told you to walk away from Michel, and you didn’t. You know I came from the streets. You were the one who gave me the choice to get away from the streets, to leave my past behind, so why are you dredging it up now? It’s a sordid story. A twisted fairy tale. You tell me why it matters, then.”

Erwin says, “Does it bother you that I might think less of you?”

Levi laughs, cold and amused, and it’s a slap to Erwin’s face. Levi jerks his hand out of Erwin’s grip. “Conceited, aren’t you, Commander Smith? Like I said, you’ve seen me and where I come from. If you thought less of me, you would have done it already.”

“So you’re hiding something.”

_“Bien sûr,”_ Levi says.

Erwin thinks that’s agreement.

* * *

Erwin doesn’t see Levi for the next three days, and although he sees Hanji, she doesn’t approach him and always seems to find reasons why she can’t breathe the same air as him. Only Petra does, and it’s to say that “maybe Levi needs some space,” which is the closest to a reprimand that Erwin has heard from her.

Erwin finds Levi in the most unlikely space: Levi’s own room.

It’s common knowledge that Levi never uses his assigned room. Too pompous, he said one when Erwin asked him why. He usually prowls the property, an insomnious wolf that Erwin watches from the window of his own bedroom.

But Levi is there, a dark figure sitting on the windowsill. The window is open. Erwin stops in the open doorway. Levi must know he’s there, but he doesn’t turn. So Erwin steps in. He doesn’t know how to say an apology. It’s been years since he’s had to apologize for anything.

While he’s trying to formulate one – he doesn’t know what he’s even apologizing for, only that he wants Levi back, because even if he can’t have Levi the way he wants to, at least he can have him as a captain, as humanity’s strongest soldier – Levi speaks:

_“Je ne l’aimais pas,”_ he says.

_“Je n’aime personne,”_ Erwin repeats, catching something of the same sound. Probably with the same awful pronunciation. In his memory, he can still capture the roll of the words in Levi’s mouth, but no matter how much he tries, he can’t replicate it.

Levi turns, then. His mouth is peaked with pain, his eyes dark and vulnerable. The shadows slice across his face. “I didn’t love him,” he says. “I know what Michel told you: I fell in love, I betrayed him, he died still loving me. What a beautiful romance.” There’s a bit of the old Levi in that last statement, a bit of the mocking chill. “What a load of bullshit.”

Erwin closes the door behind him. He thinks that if he moves too close, this Levi will disappear out the window. He’s wary of speaking. “Then what happened?”

Levi’s hand tightens against the black fabric of his knees. He tips his head back. Erwin’s eyes trace the white line of his throat. Levi’s voice is terribly casual, and the distance in his voice is awful.

“He raped my sister. Over and over. He starved us. He beat us. We lived in a cage. I didn’t see sunlight for a full year, Erwin. Do you understand how that is? Can you imagine a world without hope? So I did what I could. I made a bargain. I gave everything to him. I worked for him. I let him humiliate me. I took it all with a smile. How giving Levi is, they said. Look at how much he loves him.”

Levi falls quiet.

Erwin does not want to know anymore, but he can’t leave this hanging. “And then?”

“And all the while, Linde is raped every night, and I can’t do a single fucking thing about it. I sit outside his room and listen to my sister screaming. After the first time in a night, she stops screaming, and that is a thousand times worse because every single fucking night, I listen to her lose hope and hate me a little more.

“Then she dies. Malnutrition can do that, you know.”

Erwin knows all too well. And this explains the softness in Levi’s face when he look at Petra.

“She was the only person – the only person in the entire world for me. He grieved. No one to fuck. No one to power play with. So I sat on his lap and I kissed him. I let him put his hands on me. But I had a knife. He didn’t have a chance.”

“Of course not,” Erwin says. He doesn’t know what else to say. He knows these things happen in the city, but this is Levi. Levi is the strongest person he knows. Levi cannot be locked up anywhere. He knows, because he has tried to lock Levi to his side, and every time, Levi slips free some way or another, giving his heart away to someone else or something else, as though to spite Erwin personally. “It took him three years to die.”

Levi smiles. It’s a cruel, malicious smile. “I did a good job, didn’t I?”

Erwin crosses his arms.

Levi is shaking. He didn’t allow any of what he had gone through destroy him, and now Erwin was wrecking him by forcing him to lay bare everything he was ashamed of. Years and years of hiding it from sight, from hiding it from yourself, Erwin thinks. _“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez de moi?”_

Erwin doesn’t know what that means. He crosses the room. “I’m sorry, Levi.”

He says it Michel’s way, and Levi says, “That’s not my name.” He sounds so, so tired. He sounds hollowed out and dead. “Erwin. Commander. Just. Just go. You’ve got what you came for, didn’t you? You have the truth. Was it worth it?”

No, Erwin thinks. Nothing is worth this. “Tell me what I can do.”

“You,” Levi says, and he looks up, the first time he has even looked at Erwin throughout all this, “can do nothing at all.”

Erwin stands where he is. He repeats, “Tell me what I can do.”

Levi pulls himself up to his knees. He moves like an old man, like there is acid in his joints. He murmurs something, and Erwin leans forward to hear him. _“Tenez-moi,”_ he says, and Erwin doesn’t know what that means. It’s always been like this between them, Erwin never understanding anything.

But he puts his arms around Levi. Funny, he thinks. I see the shadows and the bones, and it’s only now that I realize how small he is. The weight of our world rests on his shoulders, and he carries it, although he has no one to fight for.

Levi’s breath ghosts across Erwin’s neck. It is shaky and scared, and Erwin thinks he might be crying. _“Je n’aime personne,”_ he says. _“Je dis trop de mensonges.”_

“Levi?”

“If I tell you something,” Levi says, quiet and raw, “make it mean nothing in the morning.”

Erwin hesitates. He tells the truth. How long has it been since he’d done that? “I can’t do that.”

Already, this will put a distance between them in the morning, Levi hating his vulnerability. Because that’s how Levi is. He won’t let anybody in.

“I need a drink,” Levi says. He sounds more like himself, distant and bored. Erwin has never been this close to Levi, and yet he knows he’s losing Levi and he doesn’t know how to get him back. Despite Levi’s voice, Erwin can still feel the hitch of his breaths against his neck, the tremors in his shoulders.

“Tell me about her,” Erwin says.

Levi says, “Who?” and when Erwin says nothing, he says, “No.”

Erwin knows men. He knows Levi, or he knows Levi as much as someone can know Levi. So he waits it out.

Levi pulls back. He leans too close to the open window for Erwin’s liking. “Fine,” he says. “She was my world. She was younger than me. I was her half brother. She had blond hair. She knew me like nobody does. She made me promise to do something beautiful.”

Erwin thinks that opening up old wounds is useless. But right now he thinks he is letting the infection air out. He hopes so because if he isn’t, then this is pointless, this is meaningless, this is unnecessary suffering. “Beautiful.”

“Beautiful. _Comme l’amour._ ” Levi’s laugh is a bit tired, a bit sad. He rubs his eyes and gets off the windowsill, slips past Erwin and stops by the desk. He leans against it. Erwin follows him, stands too close. “She was a romantic at heart. A romantic to the end.”

“Have you done something beautiful?” Erwin nearly stumbles over the word. Beautiful is not associated with Levi. Sharp. Brilliant. Hungry. But not beautiful.

Levi turns. He is dangerous at this moment. “No. Now get out. Unless you want to pull rank, Commander.”

“Was there ever rank?” Erwin asks, amused in spite of himself. He doesn’t think that being commander has ever made Levi actually listen to him. Levi listens to him, but Erwin thinks it’s more out of a sense of debt than anything else.

Levi shrugs. He picks up his jacket and pulls it on.

_“Je souhaite que vous soyez mien,”_ Erwin says suddenly, because he can’t let Levi leave, and this is it.

Levi almost frowns. “Parroting now?” He seems unnerved though. “Your accent is atrocious.”

Erwin says what Michel told him. “ ‘I wish you were mine.’ Your words, not mine.”

Levi doesn’t deny it. He isn’t a liar, unlike Erwin. He is too truthful, and everyone knows it. “And so?”

Erwin takes another step closer. He can persuade men to die for him, but he has never once in his life persuaded a single person to love him. The lack of experience is both thrilling and terrifying like entering unmapped territory with God knows how many Titans.

Except Levi can do worse than any Titan.

“I offer you my heart,” Erwin says.

Levi looks at him. Erwin doesn’t know what he’s thinking. “And will this mean something in the morning?”

“No,” Erwin lies, because he has never been able to really stop himself from garnishing the truth with lies. Because he has always wanted to hold all the cards in one hand while swapping out the deck with the other.

Levi knows he’s lying. He doesn’t move. “So do something.”

Erwin moves forward and curls a hand around Levi’s neck, and he kisses him. Softly. Lightly. And it’s as though a signal has been given, because Levi surges to meet him, and it is like meeting a storm.

It is knocking teeth and nipping, it is Levi’s mouth on his neck and it is Erwin’s back meeting the mattress, it is Levi falling apart on Erwin’s fingers, while Erwin watches, mesmerized by the line of Levi’s neck as he curls his fingers against just the right place, it is Erwin pushing into Levi and Levi gasping, “ _Je t’aime, ne me quitte jamais,”_. It is everything between them that Erwin cannot understand in words but that he thinks he understands now in body.

_“Je souhaite que vous soyez mien,”_ Erwin says, when it is over and Levi is curled against him. He presses his mouth against the sharp bone of Levi’s shoulder and says, _“I am yours.”_

Levi is falling asleep. He half turns his head. _“Je suis tien,”_ he says. His voice is rough. “Even if you aren’t here in the morning.” 

Erwin isn’t leaving. 

**Author's Note:**

> Levi's OC sister is raped; he tells this to Erwin (i.e., it doesn't happen in real time). He describes it secondhand; in his memory, he is behind another door (he hears but doesn't see it). Levi also tries to seduce someone (kisses them) in order to stab them. He does not have sex with the other character. Both Levi and his sister are underage at that point in time.
> 
> Translations:
> 
> 1\. _“Tu me manques.”_ \- I miss you, or more accurately, you lack me.  
>  2\. _“Il est mort. Tu n’y étais pas. Il est mort en te voulant.”_ \- He's dead. You weren't there. He died wanting you.  
>  3\. _Une belle fille. Elle lui ressemble._ \- A beautiful girl. She looks like him.  
>  4\. _“Ne me parlez pas. Ne me regardez pas. Pensez-vous que je ne vous tuerai pas? Êtes-vous si stupide que vous pensez que je suis la même personne que vous avez connue?”_ \- Don't talk to me. Don't look at me. Do you think I won't kill you? Are you so stupid that you think I'm the same person you knew? [used formal voice to indicate distance]  
>  5\. _“Je pensais que vous l’aviez aimé!”_ \- I thought you loved him. [Michel switches to formal when he realizes he's in deep shit]  
>  6\. _“Je n’aime personne. Je les utilise seulement.”_ \- I love no one. I only use them.  
>  7\. _“Je souhaite que vous soyez mien.”_ \- I wish you were mine.  
>  8\. _“Connard.”_ \- Fucker  
>  9\. _“Bien sûr.”_ \- Of course.  
>  10\. _“Je ne l’aimais pas.”_ \- I didn't love him.  
>  11\. _“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez de moi?”_ \- What do you want from me?  
>  12\. _“Tenez-moi.”_ \- Hold me.  
>  13\. _“Je n’aime personne. Je dis trop de mensonges.”_ \- I love no one. I tell too many lies.  
>  14\. _"Comme l’amour.”_ \- Like love.  
>  15\. _“Je t’aime, ne me quitte jamais.”_ \- I love you. Never leave me. [switch to informal]  
>  16\. “Je suis tien.” - I am yours.


End file.
